The better the school the harsher the attack from board dissidents

Sunday

Nov 29, 2009 at 2:00 AM

A member of the Middletown school board has launched a crusade against the superintendent at a very odd time, while the district's performance is showing great progress and earning high praise in the community and around the state. This latest round of attacks on Superintendent Ken Eastwood also has a strangely familiar ring to it, echoing one that ended up costing the district and the same member, Evelyn Isseks, several thousand dollars last time around in a similar series of attacks on different school officials.

A member of the Middletown school board has launched a crusade against the superintendent at a very odd time, while the district's performance is showing great progress and earning high praise in the community and around the state. This latest round of attacks on Superintendent Ken Eastwood also has a strangely familiar ring to it, echoing one that ended up costing the district and the same member, Evelyn Isseks, several thousand dollars last time around in a similar series of attacks on different school officials.

The way Isseks sees it, she has been "asking a lot of questions — and by the way, they're not being answered." That's not the way the New York State Council of School Superintendents sees it. As the council lawyer put it in a letter to the board, Isseks "has unilaterally chosen to write letters to public officials accusing Eastwood of misconduct." The letters to the state attorney general and comptroller contained, the council said, "slanderous statements" that would be "actionable in a court of law."

If that sounds familiar, it's because in 1989 the Orange County Supreme Court rebuffed an attempt by Isseks that also consisted, she said, of just asking questions to get information she said she did not have. The court, in very blunt language, pointed out that Isseks had been present at hundreds of events for which she claimed to have no information. In addition to dismissing requests it called "frivolous," the court made Isseks and her attorney pay $5,000 toward expenses and attorney fees.

But the court was not through. The ruling lamented "the fact that cooler heads did not prevail on both sides causing this dispute to escalate, requesting court action and the hiring of outside counsel to represent in-house attorneys as well as the school district. The court further laments the legal cost the Middletown School District must bear in this frivolous matter."

And still the court was not through with Isseks. The ruling contained some advice that she and some of her present fellow board dissidents would benefit from reviewing:

"Under the Education Law, members of a board of education are charged with the duty, among others, of conducting business for the benefit of the community they represent in an open and forthright manner. Personalities and vendettas of individual board members against one another must be set aside; otherwise, there is a violation of oaths of office as members of the board of education."

The court concluded with another piece of advice, one that the community had in mind during the last election when it returned a measure of accountability, responsibility and civility to the board:

"Philosophies of the members of the board of education can be addressed every year at the polling places wherein a portion of the membership of the board of education must be elected by the community at large."

If Isseks is smart, she will drop this crusade. If her fellow dissidents are smart, they will encourage her privately and insist that she does so publicly. And if the community is as smart as it was during the last election, it will support board candidates who do not need a lecture from a judge to do what is right.